The only bees you ever hear about are bees that live in...

October 30, 1985|By L.M. Boyd

The only bees you ever hear about are bees that live in colonies, but the fact is there are 14,000 species of loner bees. Each female finds some solitary crevice for none other than herself and her eggs.

Denture wearers can't be scuba divers, can they? That's what I asked. At hand are notes from divers who say yes, a little practice enables them to master the mouthpiece gear. Also reports in medical journals indicate dental experts have devised special dentures for underwater divers. Once I asked: Denture wearers can't play the tuba, can they? Sure enough, up jumped a tuba virtuoso who wore uppers and lowers. Treacherous word, ''can't.'' Somebody always ''can.''

Some owners of antique cars in England still celebrate the great leap forward of 1896, when London repealed the rule that every car on the road be preceded by a man with a red flag.

The second graduate of Harvard University built London's famed No. 10 Downing Street. What the first graduate of Harvard did is not in the record at hand. Will check further.

Most common cause of power losses in Nigeria is the giraffe, which usually knows enough to duck under electric lines but forgets when spooked.

Those few ranchers who raise bison make a tidy little side profit out of the skulls of their butchered beasts. Bleached, they sell well to the curio purveyors.

Knives are not readily available in Soviet cafeterias. Diners pick up a piece of meat with the fork and bite around the edges.

Dangerous time, Saturday afternoon. Particularly from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. That's when the most people are bitten by other people. Or so show the computer runs on health agency records.

The Duke of Wellington had a tedious time with his corsets. It is a matter of historical record, in fact, that he almost missed the Battle of Waterloo when one of his corset stays snapped.